I absolutely agree with all of your thinking on the above rant. I too often deep dive into whatever project I am doing until the point that I have spent way too much time or money or both and burn myself completely out. I don't know how to stop that I can't do anything "half-***" nor can I do it on the cheap. I like to do things once and right. Sometimes that is difficult to do when you are deep in.
I know the feeling, and that's my approach to many, many projects -- do it once and do it right. Of course, then I curse myself when I screw something up and have to figure out how to correct it, but since I'm not actually a master of any trade (except software) I think I will have to accept that.
I think there's room for projects that are more exploratory, too. This workbench is definitely one of those projects. While I'd like to be done and have a workbench I can use, it has to meet a bunch of design goals in order to be
my version of the ultimate workbench. And I will build it as many times as necessary to get to the point that I'm happy with it.
I have spent that last 2 days going from start to finish on your build thread and utterly amazed at your final product.
Thanks very much, and thanks for committing the time to do so. Having gone through a large number of threads from start to finish, I know it takes some doing.
You have a combination of woodwork, metal work, and tech that all gels together nicely.
I've never been one to make commitments.
I myself fall into the woodwork build mostly some metal here and very little tech.
I have probably spent more time doing woodworking than anything else, though "woodworking" is probably too strong a word. I spent three years in the wood shop in high school, attempted some ambitious furniture when I was younger and lived in an apartment without a shop (read: it failed) and then when I got married and moved into a house, I promptly built a fairly elaborate shed and did the various kinds of work that would more properly be called
carpentry. I've built lots of stuff out of plywood, but only occasionally from hardwood, and have only recently acquired my first hand plane (a low-angle block plane) and decent set of non-beater chisels.
And of course there's the shop.
Metalworking is fairly recent for me -- partially driven by the scooter thing, but also because I met a couple of machinists and an ME along the way, and they corrupted me.
(At least two of them are probably reading this -- Hi guys!)
I told understand how you feel about the asshats as I get the same thing on my end as I don't think most people understand woodworking. They only know metal.
Yeah, I definitely get that vibe from GJ. There are occasional pockets of carpentry (especially when someone is building a shop) but very little hard-core woodworking, and people are almost dismissive of it. I suspect that we all only have the capacity for so many hobbies, and with Garage Journal being such a car-focused site, it's not a place where a lot of woodworkers have gravitated to. Do you frequent other sites?
One last thing. The break from being online I hope gave you some perspective and also made you realize you have influenced a lot of people and your build thread is inspiring.
Believe it or not, this is something I'm still grappling with. I was inspired by so many threads here, and borrowed from several of them. To be told that my humble build thread is inspiring is hard for me to wrap my head around. Especially since I haven't really posted any final "beauty shots", ala Jack Olsen. My shop has never, ever been tidy. Not before I built it, not during the build, and not now. I've cleaned it up repeatedly, but it's never been to the point where I felt comfortable doing the kind of stunning, perfect photos that I see in a few other well-traveled threads. I'm certainly
happy that people find it inspiring -- I'm just not sure I agree with them.
I too have mostly quit posting as often on my build thread as I got very little feedback from anyone save for a few loyal followers but for me its just not worth the effort to do a write up on my projects as nobody really seems to care that much.
I've occasionally struggled with this as well. GJ can seem kind of fickle that way -- sometimes you get feedback, sometimes you don't. And some threads are conspicuously overflowing with it. I've spent some time thinking about the differences between threads that get attention and threads that don't, and I think there are a variety of factors.
1) The GJ software kind of *****.
It does many things well, but keeping track of which threads you've read and which ones you haven't isn't one of those things. As soon as you go away for a while and then come back, the forum marks everything you didn't read in your previous visit as "already read". I hate that. It means that you end up missing updates until the next time it
happens to be on the first page right when you visit. Also, the index pages -- where it lists all the threads -- have only a very small number of threads per page, so stuff falls off the first page often.
This means that threads that get updated a lot -- either because the author is really, really good about posting fresh content on a regular basis, or because it has a very large following who post to it regularly -- are easy to follow. They're always on the first page. And yes, this is a bit of a catch-22.
2) Photography Matters
Gregor and Jack have both mastered this. Actually, Gregor has
more than mastered this, as he is an accomplished professional photographer when he's not pretending to be (and largely succeeding at) being a master carpenter and machinist. (Hi, Gregor!)
When I look at well-traveled threads vs. the more everyday threads (among which I count my own), the difference is well-composed, well-lit photos. I've not seen your thread (yet) so maybe this is not news to you.
3) Process Matters
People love following a process. I am never going to pour an entire house out of concrete, but I really loved watching all the details of LLWillysfan's thread (as an example). Showing a whole process from start to finish in a fairly close-spaced series of posts often makes for a really compelling read. Spooning it out in dribs and drabs (as I mostly have here) seems to be less compelling, until people stumble on it when it's all done and read the thread from start to finish (as you've just done).
4) Long blocks of text like this bore the **** out of people
We'll do a little experiment. To everyone that's read this far in this post, please reply with the phrase "The chickens are in the coop".
